Two of our posts here were among the most read and commented on for a while, too, so we’ll give those a bit of special attention first.

The Great British Beer Festival

Having ruminated for a month we finally expressed some ideas about ways to improve GBBF. Our pre-emptive whining about how hard it is to discuss CAMRA and GBBF without people getting narky seems to have worked and a generally civil, stimulating conversation ensued. There was also quite a bit of chat on Twitter, across various Facebook groups and pages, on the Hopinions (Beer O’Clock Show) podcast, and behind the closed doors of the CAMRA discussion forum.

Seven Ages of Beer Geek

We think this attempt to break down the trajectory of a typical beer geek’s obsession was a bit more than just a listicle but there’s no denying the ‘click appeal’ of a post in the format ‘X types of Y’: it got something like three times as much traffic as anything else we wrote in September or, indeed, for months. It also prompted some substantial responses from other bloggers.

Jeff Alworthdidn’t agree with our conclusions (‘The stages are conceptually familiar, but not emotionally so’) but, actually, we think he misunderstood our point, i.e. that if you go deeper than stage one, two or three, this is where it might lead, rather than that everyone will always end up at seven, or that they will always pass through every stop on the way. But his own reflections on the subject are as thoughtful as ever and worth a read.

With a book to promote — we know, we know, but if we don’t do it, no-one else will with the state of 21st century publishing budgets — we ran a competition to win a copy. There’s not much point in reading our post now the deadline has passed but you might want to look at the winning prose entries from Liam and Robert on Twitter.

There’s something appealing about the idea of discovering a hidden gem in the least pretentious of surroundings, standing on chipped floor tiles next to the permanently running dehumidifier near the tinned Bigos. Most people are too snobby, too xenophobic, too scared to tackle these mysterious labels, goes the inner dialogue, but me? I’m a brave adventurer.

We’ve observed an improvement in the quality of Young’s Ordinary and decided to declare it to the world. Since writing that post we’ve been in touch with CAMRA co-founder Michael Hardman who says he has tried Ordinary lately: ‘Not quite as bitter, while still being well balanced, as it was, but a vast improvement on a few months ago, when it was just another low-gravity bitter.’

At one point a young woman in office clothes came in and took a seat by the window. As she talked on her mobile phone the woman behind the bar came over and asked her brusquely if she intended to buy a drink or not. The young women told the person on the phone, pointedly, that they should meet in a different pub instead, and left. We weren’t made to feel unwelcome in any overt, specific way but it did feel as if we’d intruded upon a private party, or perhaps a wake. It was literally and spiritually gloomy.

I started drinking tea when I was about 2-years-old — weak and milky, then, out of a bottle. The not so fun side of this is that by the time I reached my teens I was on about ten cups a day and suffered withdrawal symptoms (migraine, faintness) if I missed a dose for some reason. Tea is, after all, a powerful stimulant and vehicle for caffeine, despite all the Great British Bake Off tweeness that comes with it.

Another pub that has long intrigued us is the Alpine Gasthof in Rochdale. Here’s what we’ve learned so far which we’re hoping might smoke out more intel from our readers. (The real surprise here was discovering that the AG had a twin in Yorkshire.)

Could hermit micropubs be the answer to the problem of the kind of huge Victorian and inter-war pubs that struggle to feel full and so often end up converted into fast food restaurants, flats and supermarkets? (See Dale Ingram’s comment below this post for some learned commentary.)

If there’s not enough reading for you in that lot there were also our usual weekly round-ups of good reading around the internet: